Previews

Skate It

Flick your way through kickflips, ollies and shove-its with EA's upcoming DS adaptation.

Spiffy:

Intuitive gameplay that beautifully transitions the analog stick trickery of Skate to the stylus.

Iffy:

How will the rest of the tech, such as Skate's environments, translate to the DS hardware?

Unlike the Wii, Nintendo's portable platform has a wealth of great skateboarding games. Vicarious Visions' Tony Hawk titles have excelled in spite of the mediocre performance of their console counterparts. With that in mind, EA Black Box is stepping into some tough competition with the handheld version of Skate It, the debut of the Skate franchise on Nintendo DS. However, after some brief hands-on time with it, we're confident that there's enough room for two solid skaters on the market.

During a presentation at EA's pre-E3 press event, executive producer Scott Blackwood explained how Skate It functions, by referring to the DS controls as "flick it" gameplay. It's a bit closer to traditional gaming controls than its Wii counterpart, but it still has a few DS-centric quirks. On the touch screen, there's a picture of a skateboard. By drawing motions over the board with your stylus, you'll perform specific tricks.

Blackwood treated the audience to a rather hilarious video of a faux news broadcast in the vein of Skate's stellar opening movie. San Vanelona, it seems, has been hit with a number of natural disasters that borders on Biblical proportions. All of the news team's artist re-enactments seem to have been rendered by a kindergarten class. Needless to say, the city is a complete and utter wasteland, and virtually all of its denizens have fled.

What's a better place to build up the cred necessary to get signed to Thrasher? Blackwood mentioned that as your skater's visibility and fame increase, the pros will start inviting him or her into real-life cities. It remains to be seen if those real-life cities will end up as authentic as a tourist video or as cartoonishly truncated as in Tony Hawk.

After the presentation, we got our first hands-on with Skate It. Unlike the Wii demo, which only faintly resembled Skate on the 360/PS3, Skate It DS' level was laid out nearly identically to the tutorial level of Skate. The controls are very intuitive for anyone who's played Skate, perhaps even moreso than the Wii version's. The d-pad controls movement, and the shoulder buttons are mapped to grabs. Everything else is solidly touch-based. If you draw a diagonal arrow, it's an ollie. A flick in the opposite direction is a nollie. A flick up sets up a kickflip. If you touch the side of the board, the skater will kick to gain speed. Since the stylus replaces a traditional right stick, many of the motions in Skate translate fluidly into Skate It.

Skate It might not blaze trails for skateboarding on DS in the same way that the Wii version will, but it's certainly looking like a welcome addition to the DS' rich library. Like Vicarious Visions' Tony Hawk titles, which retool classic Birdman mechanics to Nintendo's hardware, Skate It faithfully adapts the console version's stick-based maneuvers to the platform. Unlike the Birdman's console endeavors, however, EA Black Box's core gameplay is in little need of overhaul, so the source material for Skate It is quite strong. We're definitely excited to play more of it as we get closer to E3.